Whatever the potential team ends calling itself, the National Hockey League appears to be heading back to the state of Washington.

The league’s Board of Governors agreed to consider an expansion application from Seattle during its annual meeting in Florida on Thursday.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman says the franchise fee for the 32nd club has been set at US$650 million, up significantly from the $500 million the Vegas Golden Knights forked over to join the league this season.

“We’ve agreed as a league to take and consider an expansion application, and to let them run in the next few months, a season-ticket drive,” Bettman said at the board of governors meeting in Manalapan, Florida. “This is a process that we go through.”

The City of Seattle, which earlier this week agreed to let the Tim Leiweke-led Oak View Group pour $660 million into renovations at KeyArena to bring the arena up to NHL and NBA standards, must wait until 2020 for the conclusion of construction.

The Metropolitans played in the Pacific Coast Hockey association from 1915 to 1924. They won the Stanley Cup in 1917, defeating the National Hockey Association’s Montreal Canadiens. The Breakers, meanwhile, were the city’s original Western Hockey League team. Nowadays, the WHL team is called the Thunderbirds.

Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan said she spoke with Tim Leiweke, part of the Oak View Group that got approval to renovate KeyArena, and that they “couldn’t be more thrilled.” She hopes to meet with potential owner David Bonderman soon.

“I think we’ll see the launch after the first of the year because it’s not the time right now to be launching that kind of campaign. But I think there is a lot of pent up appetite in Seattle for this,” Durkan said. “I think we’ll meet the benchmarks we need to meet and in the mean time we’ll be negotiating the side agreements, doing the environmental work and moving forward so we can open when the NHL wants to come.”

Also announced Thursday in Florida, the Carolina Hurricanes have sold a majority stake in the franchise to Dallas billionaire Tom Dundon. Previous principal owner, Peter Karmanos Jr., will maintain an equity stake in the Raleigh-based team.

Dundon’s involvement will likely renew speculation that the beleaguered franchise could be relocated to Houston, with the recently sold Toyota Center — home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets — floated as a potential new home.

However, TSN reported that, as part of the purchase deal, Dundon has agreed to not apply for relocation for a period of seven years.